


Adoration and All Things Frightening

by Elliott_Fletcher



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chinese New Year, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 17:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9502151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elliott_Fletcher/pseuds/Elliott_Fletcher
Summary: Ji has been waiting for a long time: for his senior debut, for his eighteenth birthday . . . for Leo's phone call. A year, another, and now a month: a month is too long a time to not hear Leo's voice, Ji thinks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to TroyaoiSivan for suggesting I write Leoji for the Chinese New Year! Please enjoy!

Ji has been waiting for a long time: for his senior debut, for his eighteenth birthday . . . for Leo's phone call. A year, another, and now a month: a month is too long a time to not hear Leo's voice, Ji thinks.

* * *

The ring is something familiar in his ears, the vibration of his phone natural against his palm. It is familiar, but as Ji lies in bed, eyes bleary and sore, he remembers immediately how foreign the call is; he has not heard this ringtone in weeks. He presses his face into his pillow, fingers clenching into the down and the silicone of his phone case. He wipes the drool escaping his mouth on his pillow, and he swallows; his throat is dry and fluttering at the thought of a phone call after extended silence — even a phone call in the middle of the night —

It _is_ night, not morning. The drawn curtains show navy skies and clouds illuminated by still-burning sulphur street lamps. The ghost of their light casts against the wall adjacent to the door, fracturing on the ceiling, fuelling the glow-dark stars his older sister sticky-tacked when he was in elementary. He blinks up at them, then to the window where surely more hide behind cloaks of clouds. His phone buzzes incessantly.

He clicks the green shape — or thinks he does — and the phone stops vibrating, but Leo is not in his ear. He scrunches his eyes and looks at the screen again, and he sighs when he sees the phone call duration (0:00). He hits the call-back button, using his free hand to push all his heavy limbs over to lay on his back. (One ring, two rings), the thrum of each tightening muscle twangs as he relaxes into the sheets, and they grab him with their inanimate thread hands and keep him tied to a half-slumber. He thinks about the space between him and the wall, and he thinks about the cold ache of his back from where the ice's touch still lingers; his bed is softer than ice, but that empty space tangs an unappealingly wonder against his tongue.Three rings . . . Leo picks up. Ji knows because the line fills with static, but he still cannot hear Leo, and his breath fanning into the speaker is all that tells Ji he is actually there.

Ji coughs the dry out of his throat, and it clears half as well as he needs it to. "You messed up the times again."

Leo exhales jauntily, and it rushes right through the line and pangs at Ji's heart. He has not heard him in so long, and he waits, baited, for the first break of voice. "I didn't mess . . . um, I mean, I wasted — wasted time," he mumbles, and it takes Ji torturous moments to make sense of the sounds.

"Why did you waste time," Ji breathes, and he wipes his sweaty palm along his sweaty brow, dragging damp and wiping it on his pyjama pants. The cotton catches against his hands — the same way Leo's voice catches as it forms a reason for a month's absence. Ji hears him sigh, and the resoluteness of the expelled air flickers something akin to hope behind Ji's sternum. Maybe this time will be the time they fix it.

Leo clears his throat. "I, um, before now, wanted to call. But I felt like I needed, um, needed an excuse to talk to you. Like the lunar New Year." Something plastic rustles too sharp, and Ji jolts away from his phone. He turns the volume down, and the buttons stick beneath his sleep-gummed fingers. Hastily, Leo adds, "Happy New Years."

Ji wants to laugh. It sort of escapes him in a sigh, but it is dry and mirthless, and he feels awful for the weeks he has spent draining energy over a misunderstanding, over insecurities. _We are both not enough,_ Ji thinks; he wishes he could lend the fraction of confidence he owns to Leo. He tries to with words: "You never need an excuse with me. 'I wanted to hear your voice — ' that's excuse enough."

Leo huffs, "It's really that easy, I know, but my mind says, 'You can't just call randomly like some telemarketer, he'll think you're annoying!' And then I get _so anxious,_ I can't talk to you for weeks, and then I'm miserable because the best part of my weeks is _gone!_ " Leo grumbles, and more rustling can be heard, tickling his ears with the scratch and the tenor, and he tugs the blanket to his bare shoulders. The quilt is cottony and traps all the heat within him; it wriggles impatiently in his gut, like a serpent winding its way through his heart and its vessels, the serpent called adoration and all things frightening.

"You're . . . You're, um, the best part of my week too," Ji flips his pillow so the cold side faces him, and he flops onto his stomach to press his hot cheeks to it; the restlessness only grows, and Ji adds with half as much air as he should: "Happy New Year."

Leo mumbles, " . . . It is now," and Ji agrees. He thinks he will sleep tonight without a heavy gut and a cotton face. He thinks he can sleep the rest of the night and wait for Leo's call, and he knows it will come not in a month but in the morning, when Leo needs to tell him how exhausted he is, how he needs to sleep, but how he loves Ji enough to wait.


End file.
